


The Lyrium Supply

by Lasegreen



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canon Compliant, Complete, Disaster Response, Gen, Haven (Dragon Age), Lyrium Addiction, Lyrium Withdrawal, Missing Scene, Tranquil Mages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:14:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27827335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lasegreen/pseuds/Lasegreen
Summary: Cullen’s eyebrows lifted at the hint of a story, then snapped down again. “I’m sorry. I should have discussed this with you first.”“Yes, you should have. Cullen, there is no need to stint yourself,” she told him. “If we cannot get more lyrium soon, we will ration it fairly, but for now it seems safer to keep the templars at full strength. You can do no good by suffering alone.”“What?”In the days before the start of the reborn Inquisition, Cassandra investigates a discrepancy.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	The Lyrium Supply

Twenty-two days.

Cassandra blinked at the estimate and looked back at Avexis for confirmation, but the Tranquil clerk did not register her surprise. So she asked aloud, “Are you sure? This is longer than I expected it to last.”

“Yes, unless our information is incomplete. If other templars are found among the survivors of the Conclave explosion, our supply will be depleted more rapidly,” Avexis said.

Her voice was a deep contralto that seemed incongruous for the small elf woman, but like all Tranquil she spoke without inflection. Cassandra could almost envy her equanimity.

It was three days since an unknown explosive force had demolished the thousand-year-old Temple of Sacred Ashes, murdered Divine Justinia and hundreds of her guests, shattered the peace talks she was hosting there, and torn open a livid Breach between the spirit world and the mortal one. The village of Haven on the mountainside below had become an armed camp crowded with refugees, many of whom had warred against each other only weeks before.

Among them—counting both the delegates to the talks and the rescuers who had arrived later—were seventy-four templars. They would begin to suffer from withdrawal symptoms as soon as the lyrium ran out, and the only reason it hadn’t run out already was that hundreds of their fellows had died in the explosion. Avexis showed no sign of whether that bleak calculation made her hope for or against more survivors.

“Not much chance of that now,” Cassandra sighed. It was more than a day since they’d last found anyone alive in the high valley where the temple had stood. The cold had killed the few the demons missed.

Avexis’s polite expression did not change. “As you say, Seeker.”

At least it was unlikely that anyone on the roster would die in the next three weeks, either. After three harrowing days and what Cassandra was prepared to call a genuine miracle, they had stabilized the Breach; no more demons had come through to maraud their way down the pilgrims’ paths, and the chaos had finally begun to give way to the survivors’ efforts. The situation was still desperate, but at least they were organized enough to keep everyone warm and fed.

Other supplies were harder to come by than food and fuel. On the left-hand page of her ledger, Avexis had tallied all the lyrium they had stockpiled in the back storeroom of the village chantry. This included the one scuffed chest that had come from Kirkwall with Cassandra and her volunteers, which she recognized by the coat of arms painted on its lid. It was more than half empty, of course. The templars she’d recruited to her cause had expected to restock once they reached the Conclave, but that plan had evaporated along with so many others when the temple was destroyed.

Instead, they had pooled what remained of it with the lyrium stores the village chantry had kept for Haven’s own small garrison. Some of the Conclave survivors did the same, but none of them could offer more than a vial or two from their personal kits. Even the renegade templars who had broken from Chantry control seemed to have gone on distributing lyrium from a guarded central supply—if only so they could ration it when it ran short, just as Cassandra was contemplating now—and the lyrium chests the delegates brought with them had all gone up in the blast. Meanwhile the rebel mages seemed to have had no access to lyrium at all, even in the diluted form they used to bolster their magic.

On the right-hand page was the roster of surviving templars, along with the lyrium dose allotted to each. These amounts were smaller on average than Cassandra would have guessed. The Conclave explosion had disproportionately spared the young, mostly because their junior rank and relative unimportance had kept them safely outside the Temple, and they had built up less tolerance than the veterans Cassandra was used to. Even so, there was more left in Avexis’s inventory than there should have been.

“This says they need more than the total amount we’ve given out each day,” Cassandra said aloud, confused.

“Yes. I have not denied any requests. Given the disruption of routine, perhaps one or more templars are forgetting their daily draughts,” Avexis suggested.

“Impossible. You know what it does to them if they miss a dose,” Cassandra said. Then she thought about what a comment like that meant from one of the Tranquil, and she turned a sharper eye on the clerk. “Avexis, when was your last hot meal?”

Avexis tilted her head as if she found the change of subject hard to follow. “I am uncertain. I have not taken time to eat today.”

“I should have asked earlier,” Cassandra sighed.

She set the ledger down on a crate. Avexis moved to put it away, but Cassandra took her elbow and steered her toward the door instead. The Tranquil woman followed along willingly like a dance partner, but as soon as Cassandra let go of her she stood still again.

“Go, find Flissa and tell her you missed breakfast,” she ordered. “I’ll talk to whoever’s not getting their lyrium.”

“Yes, Seeker,” said Avexis indifferently, and she left the storeroom.

The discrepancy had been by the same amount on each of the three days: a small fraction of the total, but higher than the average for any one templar in this company of youngsters. Cassandra checked the names of the wounded first, fearing that they had been forgotten; instead she found that Avexis had been delivering their draughts to the makeshift hospital herself every morning. Cassandra went back to the first name on the roster, meaning to read through it line by line, only to find the problem right there at the top of the list.

_Commander Cullen S. Rutherford: 0, 0, 0_

Twenty-two days, and a veteran who needed more lyrium than most was torturing himself to make it twenty-three. Cullen must have accepted that the lyrium supply, which affected no one but the templars on an everyday basis, would take lower priority after the explosion than a hundred other urgent needs. He hadn’t complained. Apparently, he had quietly taken it upon himself to stretch what they had instead. Cassandra should not have waited so long to check on the storeroom. She clapped the ledger shut with a muttered curse.

A huddle of Chantry sisters scattered at the look on Cassandra's face as she emerged from the building. She ignored them—probably there was some chore they had been shirking—and strode directly down to the lakeshore below the village. Cullen had set up a training yard there for anyone who knew or could learn how to fight. He had his back to her as she approached, but his red coat with its heavy fur collar stood out even at a distance.

“You’ve been skipping your lyrium draught, Commander,” she said quietly, close behind him.

He jumped like a guilty child. The recruits he’d been instructing stopped abruptly to watch, but Cassandra shooed them off with a level glare. The man she had chosen to build an army ducked his head as he turned to face her, with his hand coming up automatically to rub the exposed back of his neck.

“Oh!” Cullen said. “How did you—I mean, have I let something slide? I didn’t mean to allow it to interfere with my duties.”

“Then don’t go into withdrawal,” she said in exasperation. “Did you think I had forgotten about the lyrium? I asked Avexis to take over the inventory, which you would already know if you had ever gone to the chantry to refill your kit. Her records are quite meticulous.”

Strangely, Cullen looked relieved. She had noticed before that the nervous way he carried himself tended to disappear when they argued, as if old habit made him expect far worse from any confrontation with a superior. She had heard the horror stories about the late Knight-Commander of Kirkwall and her paranoid rages, but it was that hunted look even in her former second-in-command that made Cassandra believe the worst of them—far too late.

“So your Tranquil friend gave me away?” Cullen said with an embarrassed chuckle. “Of course, she’d have no reason to keep it from you.”

“Avexis does not spy for me,” said Cassandra.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I just noticed you’ve been looking out for her in particular, the last few days,” he said.

Reluctantly she explained, “An old... friend, a mage, was protecting her when he died. I owe it to them both. But don’t change the subject.”

Cullen’s eyebrows lifted at the hint of a story, then snapped down again. “I’m sorry. I should have discussed this with you first.”

“Yes, you should have. Cullen, there is no need to stint yourself,” she told him. “If we cannot get more lyrium soon, we will ration it fairly, but for now it seems safer to keep the templars at full strength. You can do no good by suffering alone.”

“What?”

Clearly the idea had not even occurred to him. Cassandra must have read the situation wrong, but she was at a loss for another explanation. There was a long pause while they both stared at each other in confusion.

“This isn’t about the lyrium supply?” she said helplessly, and finally Cullen understood what she had assumed.

He said bitterly, “You thought I was skipping my draught to make the supply last a little longer for everyone else? Seeker, no! I’m flattered you think I have the strength to do such a thing.”

“Why, then?” she asked, baffled.

“As a trial, at first,” he said. “To see if I could last the week. It’s not that I… are you ordering me to go back on it at once?”

She frowned. “How long did you mean to go without?”

“The rest of my life. I want to quit taking it,” he explained.

Then she understood. “You agreed to join me here because you wanted a fresh start, away from the Templar Order. Was this always part of it, then?”

He nodded. “I meant to make a decision after the Conclave. The Order can’t go on as it always has, like vicious dogs kept on the Chantry’s chain. I thought that maybe, after the negotiation with the mages, the Order would change into something I could bear to be part of again. Now, though… there’s never going to be a good time, is there?”

“Perhaps not,” Cassandra said ruefully, glancing up at the Breach in the distance. “I prayed that the Conclave would succeed, and that we were preparing for a worst case that would never happen. I never imagined this. But since a new Inquisition is all the more necessary, maybe this is the best time. We must find a way forward that the Chantry could not, all of us.”

“I’m surprised you see it that way,” he admitted.

“You are not a child to be lectured about the risks,” she said. 

“You’re not angry? What if I become a burden? More of one than I was on the Waking Sea, I mean.”

The sea voyage at the beginning of their journey from Kirkwall had been difficult for all of them, but Cullen suffered worse from seasickness than anyone Cassandra had ever met. Lyrium draughts burned like acid on an unsettled stomach, no matter what they did to counteract it; most of the templar volunteers under his nominal command had suffered from headaches and short tempers for the first few days at sea. Cullen, who had lain bedridden almost the entire length of the trip, did not manage to keep down a single dose until they reached port in Amaranthine. The seasickness alone would not have killed him. The lyrium withdrawal nearly had.

“I admit, I’m surprised you would go through that again so soon. But I will not stop you. Not unless your life is in danger,” she told him.

“That can’t be where you draw the line,” he said, shaking his head. “If this makes me paranoid, if I do something to harm the Inquisition before it even starts…”

“Do you wish to resign?” she asked him.

It needed to be a serious question, but she found it hard to keep her voice even. It was not only that she feared for Cullen’s own sake, though she had come to value his friendship. If he left the Inquisition now, leaderless and with its war council barely half staffed, she was not sure the organization would survive long enough to replace him.

But he answered quickly, “No! Not if you’ll still have me.”

“Good!” she said, and he chuckled again.

Cassandra relaxed. She had her own thoughts about how the Conclave should have changed the conditions the Chantry asked its charges to live under—not only the mages who had forced the issue, but the templars and Seekers as well—and she was glad to have found an ally.

“Can I ask you one favor as templar to Seeker, though?” Cullen asked after a pause.

“You left your order. I’m not even sure where I stand with mine,” Cassandra pointed out.

He said, “But you know the warning signs. If I’m ever unable to do my work, don’t wait until I put someone else in danger. Promise me you’ll find a new commander.”

“Cullen, that should be your decision,” she protested.

“I appreciate that, but I can’t trust myself,” he said. “I don’t want to give up as soon as the withdrawal gets difficult—too late for that, anyway—”

Cassandra winced in sympathy. “Are you able to get elfroot?”

He waved the question away. “Doesn’t help. But you know better than most how much blood is on my hands from Kirkwall. I can’t stand the thought that I could make it worse by trying to do better. Will you watch me, in case?”

“All right. You have my promise as a Seeker,” Cassandra said.

“Thank you,” said Cullen, heartfelt. He reached out a hand and she shook it; his fingers were like ice, but that could have been only the weather.

She added, “For what it’s worth, you were not the only one blind to what was happening in Kirkwall.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to get into that again. You said you just checked on the lyrium supply?” he asked.

Her word already given, Cassandra let him return to the original matter. “Yes. Without rationing, we have enough for twenty-two days.”

Cullen laughed. “Who knows where we’ll be in three weeks? We’ll figure something out, Cassandra.”


End file.
